tube lens and spherical aberration
Posted by mmodel on
URL: http://confocal-microscopy-list.275.s1.nabble.com/Southeastern-Microscopy-Society-meeting-tp4640594p4641785.html
(I apologize if this is a second post, I got some strange errors from the first one)
Dear List
It's not a confocal question, it's strictly a wide-field question... When people talk about spherical aberration they typically start with a parallel beam falling on an objective, and then, for whatever reason, the objective fails to bring all the rays into a common focus. In wide-field, one has a luminous spot in the object space, and the effect of spherical aberration would be a failure of the objective to collect all the rays into a single parallel beam. Some rays will form a converging (or diverging) cone instead. Then, this cone will be received (I suspect that in the case of a diverging cone, some light may even get lost on its way) by a tube lens and form a blurry spot on the image plane. My question is, Is this situation really equivalent to the standard one considered in all books? (I suspect, it's not because even the distance to the tube lens should make a difference). But I would be very interested in the opinion of those who understand optics better than I do. Thanks!
Mike Model
Michael Model, Ph.D.
Confocal Microscopy,
Dpt Biological Sciences,
1275 University Esplanade,
Kent State University, Kent, OH 44242
tel. 330-672-2874